Good point. Many are killed by cars, but very, very few are killed intentionally by cars. And we register and insure cars and give them timely safety inspections. We also regulate many aspects of cars for use among the public. And we regulate, train, test, license, and control the users of cars. Those who do not meet specifications are never granted the privilege of driving among and endangering the public. Those who use cars improperly lose that privilege. Cars that do not meet basic use requirements likewise lose the right to be on the highways.

"How many deaths from people texting while driving? Have we taken cellphones away from everybody?"

Good point. Many people are innocent victims of the stupid idiots who use cell phones on the highways. But nobody has been intentionally killed by an idiot on a phone. And this is why more and more states are enacting laws to control improper cell phone use while driving.

"How many killed from fertilizer bombs? Yet you can still buy the materials."

Good point. But if you walk into an Agway store to buy several hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer -- the amount needed for an effective bomb -- you'll be reported.

"Drugs are illegal yet how many buy them DAILY? I can go on and on."

Good point. But the last I checked, the US has invested significant resources (more of your tax dollars than got for your "Obamaphones") trying to reduce drug use.
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Face it. We cannot legislate against stupidity. But we can install logical and intelligent roadblocks that slow and deter unthinkable actions and control or impede those unfit or unready for mature behavior.
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I hear you John, and agree to an extent, However ,why have our elected officials failed to pass legislation for backgroung checks? Gabrielle Giffords, for one is furious, and with good reason.

How can anyone be absolutely certain this bill would do no good?

Granted ,no law can stop every crazy person from harming others, but even if only a few percent of the attacks were stopped, lives would be saved. Money here seems to be more important than innocent human life.

Republican failure to pass legislation here is, to me, and perhaps most Americans, shameful to say the least. The republican party deserves to pay dearly for their callous disregard in the next election.

I agree that the ban on assault weapon proposal is more symbol than effective. But I disgree about background checks. Gun shows are the pathway to the underworld for many guns. I think that the Senate vote will end up both saving the seats, and costing the seats, of some Senators. With 90% of the public supporting some increased regulation, I hope it is enough seats to change the Senate, moderate the filibuster rule, and shift the House back to the Democrats.

Interesting I was responding to boggsman's post but by the time I finished typing it was gone. So this post will make less sense...

Nope. It makes perfectly good sense on both the gun control (because it's ineffective) and the Boggsman sense (we already know most people, especially the left, want universal BG checks, despite their ineffectiveness for reasons even coboardhead pointed out).

I don't spend much time driving in town, yet still see a couple of drivers per mile on cellphones in their cars (they're illegal in WA). The cops see it, too, but pay little attention. Like drunk driving and guns thrust out car windows in NM and car theft in WA, it's usually ignored.

Every once in a while, between dodging these idiot scofflaws, I get to have fun with a few of them. When I'm stopped at a certain nearby STOP sign and someone turns left across my nose from the right, putting his face and cell phone three feet in front of my grille, I blast him with all four high-volume horns. With 90% of their mental capacity on the phone and 10% on steering their car, their expressions and reactions are priceless. No one has lost control (of their car, that is; I don't know about their bladders or bowels) so far, but all they would do at this particular STOP sign is run onto to a flat, brushy, empty desert shoulder at low speed with only embarrassment to show for it.

Tip of the day: Why all the horns? So idiots, including semis, entering my lane can hear me over their stereos and cellphone conversations. Considering the number of times I and my friends have been run off the streets and highways by these idiots, I consider extra loud horns more valuable than seat belts ... up to a point, of course. The last time a seat belt saved me from harm was in 1966; my horns help save my fenders or more from inattentive idiots a couple of times every year, as defensive driving can do only so much when fools enter my lane. They kill a thousand times more people than U.S. mass murderers do.

I hear you John, and agree to an extent, However ,why have our elected officials failed to pass legislation for backgroung checks? Gabrielle Giffords, for one is furious, and with good reason.

How can anyone be absolutely certain this bill would do no good?

Granted ,no law can stop every crazy person from harming others, but even if only a few percent of the attacks were stopped, lives would be saved. Money here seems to be more important than innocent human life.

Republican failure to pass legislation here is, to me, and perhaps most Americans, shameful to say the least. The republican party deserves to pay dearly for their callous disregard in the next election.

Many Democrats, including Harry Reid, voted against this bill. As even many far left congressmen and iW posters acknowledge, psychiatrists cannot predict lunatic behavior.

You and I would exhaust our life savings and sell our dogs if it would save a family member's life for certain, but neither of us would do that for a statistic or a stranger. The same amount of money would save (maybe tens of) thousands of TIMES as many U.S. lives if applied in other ways.

The Republicans in Congress have made it very clear what they are against. Virtually everything that President Obama and the Democrats want. One wonders what are they really for? Where is the legislation to support the creation and growth of jobs they promised campaigning in 2010 and 2012? What have they constructively accomplished with their majority in the House of Representatives over the last two plus years?

Most of the nation wants some kind of sensible control over guns and gun violence, but what can they expect from the majority of Republicans? Absolutely nothing. In fact, Republicans and the NRA are making sure that any and all progress is killed.

I hear you John, and agree to an extent, However ,why have our elected officials failed to pass legislation for backgroung checks? Gabrielle Giffords, for one is furious, and with good reason.

I would be interested in knowing how many weapons that were legally purchased and didn't have a background check have killed people. I would be willing to bet the number is very small. Yet we are talking like our nobody is safe in our country because of this. You can't order weapons online unless you are a licensed dealer (guess what, background check), I also believe that the majority of dealers at gun shows are FFL (or is it FLL?) licensed. BUT somebody threw out the notion that this is where crime is going to happen from, so all of a sudden people with NO knowledge of weapons jump on the band wagon.

There will ALWAYS be dissasters in our country and in the world. There will always be crime (at least in our lifetime). Making more laws will not stop that. In the case of these dissasters MANY laws that already exist were broken by the perps with no regard to them. Do you really think one more would have made a difference?

We have tried to regulate morality and have failed. We have tried to regulate alcohol/drug use and have failed. Now we are trying to regulate gun purchases from people who buy their weapons legally and don't use them for crimes. What the heck is that going to do other than make you feel warm and cozy at night while illegal gun sales are taking place outside your bedroom window.

And Mike, it's not because the police officers don't care or aren't doing their jobs, if they enforced EVERY SINGLE law out there they be so busy they would have no time to actually try to prevent crime and all the "citizens" would be complaining because they are being stopped and cited. Put me on a traffic corner in any populated area for an hour and I guarantee I will come up with at least 30+ traffic violations. Every January we would have a briefing of the new laws added and we were never happy, just another law added to the THOUSANDS that already exist....

Here you have it straight from Joe Manchin....the NRA owns the Senate, owns it.

WSJ Blog: Manchin Describes the Effect of an NRA 'Score'

By Gerald F. Seib

In Washington, groups support and oppose pieces of legislation all the time--but there is opposition, and then there is real opposition.

The distinction was crucial in deciding the fate of the proposal the Senate defeated Wednesday to expand background checks for gun purchases, according to one of the two architects of that measure.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), co-author of a bipartisan amendment on background checks, said at a Seib & Wessel breakfast sponsored by The Wall Street Journal that a key moment in determining the outcome came when the National Rifle Association decided to count senators' votes in its scorecard of key votes sent to NRA members.

"If they hadn't scored it, we'd have gotten 70 votes," Sen. Manchin said. As it happened, the amendment, co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, got just 54 votes. Under the rules that Senate leaders agreed to for consideration of the broader underlying bill on gun violence, an amendment required 60 votes to pass.

By contrast, the NRA chose not to "score" the earlier vote to bring the bill to the Senate floor for debate in the first place--and that measure got 68 votes.

In other words, 14 senators who voted to consider the broader bill fell away when it came to the key amendment. Most of the defections were Republicans; 16 voted initially to advance the broad bill, but just four voted for the Manchin-Toomey amendment on background checks.

And the biggest change in the interim likely was the NRA's statement, which changed the association's position from one of simple opposition to one that, effectively, warned senators the vote would count against them when the association evaluates candidates before the next election.

In a letter to senators sent last week, the NRA specifically called the Manchin-Toomey amendment "misguided" and included it among those that would "restrict fundamental Second Amendment freedoms." It then declared: "Given the importance of these issues, votes on all anti-gun amendments or proposals will be considered in NRA's future candidate evaluations."

Sen. Manchin said he "begged" the NRA to simply inform its members of the content of his amendment, which he said shielded gun transfers within families from background checks and protected and even expanded some veterans ' gun rights. "Don't editorialize it for me, just put the fact out and let me see what happens," he said.

Instead, he said, NRA statements on the amendment's details were "disingenuous." And, he said, "I was very upset about that."

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